Důvěra, občanská participace a legitimita demokracie v České republice

This chapter, employing data from European Values Survey 1991, 1999 a 2008, analyses whether legitimacy of democracy in Czech Republic is boosted by trust in institutions, satisfaction with governance and also by collective social capital (social trust, networks of civic engagement). The results showed nonsignificant relation btw. social trust and civic participation; trust in institutions is only very weekly correlated with non-conventional participation. Also relation btw. social and institutional trust is rather weak. Legitimacy of the political regime is not influenced by social trust and only weekly by trust in institutions. The findings do not match premises of ‘cultural’ theories; they can be better understood in the light of ‘institutional’ theories which interpret trust as politically endogenous arising mainly from political impulsions.